I am back at work tomorrow, after being off for just over a week. Not looking forward to it!! We took the week off for our wedding anniversary, and had planned to do some gardening, but it has been horrible weather all week! So we have spent a lot of it going out to places to eat, and shopping. It has been a lovely week! Hubs went back today, but this is my Monday off anyway, so I have an extra day.

Has anyone been up to anything exciting? I can remember if I said last time I was on, but we finally watched "Cosmopolis". I'm not sure I liked it... Rob was really good (of course!), and very gorgeous in his suits, but it was just really weird LOL.

Anyways, a couple of responses:

Marielle - Take it easy at work! Don't do too much; you don't want to get ill again.It does seem to be rather slow here just now. I still am sad that Caryn seems to have disappeared into fb only

Suzan - Sorry you have the flu again! Get lots of rest, and hoepfully you will get better soon too!It was on the news earlier that there was a shooting at some school or university in Leiden. I hope it wasn't anywhere near yourself, was it?

Songbird - Yay that Bug has now been moved up the swimming class! Does MisterMan do swimming too? How is he getting on at it?

Sean - Hope your neck is feeling a bit better now!

Well, I better get moving as my hubs will be home soon. We have started to rewatch The X-Files - he has never really seen it, so we thought we would watch it! Tracy, I did say to him about watching Fringe at somepoint too! And we are really loving Bones just now! Too much stuff to watch!! LOL.

Hi everyone. I am ready to scream. We switched Bug's swimming lesson just 3 weeks ago from Fridays to Mondays to make it more convenient since MM had lessons on Mondays, too. She didn't want to switch because she liked her teacher so much. I figured she'd be moving on to Penguin level the next week anyway, and she'd have to switch teachers then, so it didn't matter. So first we had a fight with Bug over switching..then got her resigned to it, then the teacher messed up and didn't let her go through to Penguin level with the others...got THAT straightened out...today she goes to her first Penguin lesson and they tell us that because of the renovations, they have to switch the pool that they use, so they also have to switch the day and time of lessons...so now she has to have lessons on Friday instead. WHAT??? You mean I went through all of that CRAP to have her have 3 lessons at the same time as her brother? REALLY??? You couldn't have warned me BEFORE we switched her that some groups were going to change, maybe tell us to wait and see if it was worth it to change times until AFTER the renovation??

Anyway....posts,

Marielle, I'm so glad you are feeling a bit better. Take it easy and come home when you can. The door will be open...we won't even make you crawl through a window!

Jaclyn, glad to see you back!! I hear so much about all these great TV shows and I am staying away from all of them because I could totally waste my life away trying to watch everything. I just don't have time.Mr. Man is not doing so well with swimming. He started with a BANG and was the first one from his group to move on from the beginners pool to Frog, but he is struggling a lot. I think it might be his motor skills lacking, and it's fun to watch him because he's kind of spastic...it's more flailing than swimming, but he's definitely having problems. He still loves it though, so that's good.

Lynne, wait...who is getting married that needed the dress? Your MIL or hubby's grandma?

Great day at work, and the weather is pretty good. Nothin' like some sunlight and warmth for energy

James May's Man Lab is on again tonight, and I have just a couple of things to attend to tonight, which should be quick and easy. I'm gonna try and watch at least a part of the WEC race tonight, and I should have all of it done by the weekend.

Other than that, this is a good week to just relax and have some fun.

Also, I have to say that I'm not one who likes ground beef in much of anything. It's either chicken/turkey, pork chops/roast, or steaks and beef roasts for me. However, I did decide to try a Taco Bell beef taco, and it turned out to be pretty good. Maybe tomorrow after work I'll take a chance and buy a hamburger for the first time ever--and yes, I mean ever! I have just never really had a fondness for ground beef or even turkey and chicken, and I have had some decent turkey burgers.

So that's what I have planned for tonight and this week, and yes, I do plan on working on fan fic starting tomorrow night.

Marielle: I didn't catch the F1 race, but I caught about every other racing event this weekend. This week is looking pretty good for me to do some things that I'd like to catch up on.

Just a quiet day here. I've got some grocery shopping to do today, then I will be emailing some more bookstores to see if I can get any more signings. I now have two. Rochelle is going to a Bartercard event and she wants me to come and do some signings there.

marielle - my hand still does hurt a bit, but it is nearly better. It did hurt a bit doing the housework this morning, but not as much as it did before.

Jaclyn - sorry the weather was foul for your anniversary. I've yet to see Cosmopolis. Hopefully, I'll get around to it soon.

Songbird - oh dear, it does seem that your swimming teachers aren't on top of things, doesn't it? Sorry, it's Hubby's grandmother who needs the dress (his mother's mother). She's not the one getting married. It's one of her grandchildren.

Hey all, a fly by from me Super busy the past few days but I hope to catch up here soon! Studied all day Sunday then worked and went to a book signing yesterday! Today is both jobs day and studying where I can find the time for it! Hope everyone is doing well!!

Great day at work today again, and it was pretty good out today. That won't last, however, since it's supposed to rain and cool off tonight. At least by Friday things will improve again. I also get paid Friday, so that helps.

I plan on doing some VG stuff later after I get some stuff looked up and, after watching some videos later on, I hope to work on some fan fic before I go back to sleep.

Thursday will be an interesting day, since I have to go into work early and I'm gonna try and pick something up from a Circle K to have on a break. And today was beef taco and griller day today at Taco Bell for me. At least I'm eating something different and tried something LOL. Maybe on Thurs after work, I'll try a dollar menu hamburger at some place. I'm not turning my back on chicken, but I'm trying something different--and, no, I won't be eating meatloaf anytime soon!

I'm sorry I missed yesterday. It's a bit busy at work and to get everything done without stressing myself out meant I needed all my time.

It's going a bit better every day with myself. Many issues are related to my emotional unstable state of mind at the moment. I'm still not completely used to the meds but that's slowly getting better.

Jaclyn, I'm sorry the weather screwed up your plans for the week off. I did manage a bit of gardening last weekend. At least my front garden looks a bit better. I hope you had a great anniversary?Yeah, we really miss Caryn here... and a few other regular posters....

Susan, urgh, sounds like the swimming group is being a pain... Don't they have school swimming for bug? I remember in groep 3 or 4 we had swimming lessons as a part of the gym classes.

Sean, you didn't miss much by not watching the F1 race. It wasn't that all exciting. there were a few good racing moment and a heart stopping one when the 2 McLaren drivers decided to race each other to the teeth...besides that it was boring.

Lynne, here in Holland there is a publisher in fantasy books who does events all the time. They have a stand at each fantasy fair and than he had three or four writers there to sign, talk and promote their books. it's a really good way to promote your book.

alright, time to get some work done.

These violent delights, have violent endings...Like fire and gunpowder, they consume what they kiss

marielle - sounds good, but I don't think there's anything like that here. At least, not that I know of. Also, they can charge quite a bit to make an appearance at fairs like that. I did have one bookstore say they'd be happy to do an event for me - for $300! I don't have that kind of money.

A little bit of an update. The internet crapped out last night at about 12:30, and CenturyLink said that at the latest it would be back up at about 5:00. Well, apparently it wasn't back up until about 1:00 or 2:00 this afternoon. Friggin' CenturyLink--they suck! If only Verizon had FIOS out here, but they don't and we're stuck with CenturyLink until something like that happens. We also wish that we had cable out where I live so we can ditch DirecTV, but that hasn't happened yet, even after Time Warner said that they'd run cable out here about a decade ago if there was enough demand.

So, what does this mean? It means that I wasn't able to work on fan fic last night (I listen to You Tube videos while I write for entertainment--I have trouble writing when I either don't have a time constraint or have anything to motivate me/keep me in the mood because it's boring with nothing in the background while I write), and I have quite a few things that I need to catch up on.

I'm gonna finish up a few things real quick from last night and then I have to restart the laptop (It has updates of it's own that it wants to do now, too) and then I'll try and get all the stuff I missed last night done, hopefully with a little fan fic thrown in. I'll probably not be able to get that in tonight (I have work early tomorrow and I have to stop by the bank, too, before I go in), so I'll try for Thursday or Friday night for that.

I'll probably have more to post later, but I wanted to give everyone an update as to why I wasn't online for very long last night.

Sorry to DP, but I have this to add, as far as stuff I wanted to post last night until the internet went out.

Here's some stuff that I wanted to post earlier, but I waited until not to do (and by earlier, I meant last night before the internet was shuttered). These are videos of a Audi R18 e-tron quattro testing new bodywork for Le Mans and also testing narrower tires that will be required for LMP1 cars next year, though most of the videos feature the car with it's current wide tires. It's believe that this is the car that Audi wants to run at the Le Mans test day in early June to gather tire data for the three care entered and to test the 2014 tires in a on track condition.

Marielle and other motorsports fans will recognize the track as Monza, on the outskirts of Milan, Italy, but you'll notice something different about the path that the Audi takes compared to the F1 cars that race there every fall: